SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico – The team USA Basketball put together for its two final qualifying games for Fiba’s AmeriCup knew it would be together for only about a week.
The players made the most of this time.
Ra’Shad James scored 21 points and the US finished qualifying for AmeriCup with a 6-0 record, beating Mexico 96-75 on Saturday. Brandon Bass scored 12 points for the Americans, who surpassed the Mexicans by 33 to 12 in the 3-point range.
“Any player would like to be part of a situation like this,” said James. “You had guys who joined the system very quickly … a bunch of altruistic guys.”
Joe Johnson finished with 11 points, nine rebounds and seven assists for the United States, William Davis added 10 points and Isaiah Thomas – looking for a turnaround in the NBA – scored nine points in 20 minutes.
AmeriCup is the championship of nations in the Fiba Americas region; the USA has won seven times in nine previous chances, and reached its two games in San Juan knowing that it already had a guaranteed spot in the September 2022 tournament. Even so, it ended up beating the Bahamas and Mexico by 37 points combined in those games.
Edgar Garibay finished with 19 points and nine rebounds for Mexico.
It didn’t take long for the US to destroy Saturday’s game.
Mexico was 14-10 after the first six minutes, and this was the last time that there was any realistic hope. The Americans went on in a 13-0 run to push the lead to 17 at the end of the first quarter, Dakota Mathias made a 3-point basket with 3:13 towards the end of the 53-24 break and the result was never questioned again. .
“We really represent something bigger than ourselves and we did that,” said United States coach Joe Prunty. “We talked about how we had a standard to defend.”
Prunty also praised how altruistic the Americans were, citing Thomas for returning a few minutes on Saturday so that others could play more.
“The way they represented each other, the way they represented the U.S. team, was an incredible job, [USA Basketball men’s national team director] Sean Ford and the team to form a team like that, “said Prunty.
The USA improved to 11-1 against Mexico in senior level games from Fiba or Fiba Americas.
It took exactly one year for the US to qualify for AmeriCup; the Americans opened the process by winning 83-70 in San Juan over Puerto Rico on February 20, 2020, and this was the closest game they had in the series of six games.
The coronavirus pandemic forced the last two sets of qualifying windows for two bubble games, first in Indianapolis in November, when the United States secured its seat on AmeriCup and now those games in San Juan. Mike Fratello trained the USA in the first two windows, Prunty took over for those games and the Americans set up three different lineups for the three sets of games.
AmeriCup qualification was the first step in a long process to reach the fields of the 2023 Basketball World Cup and the 2024 Paris Olympics. Only the host nations – Philippines, Japan and Indonesia for the next World Cup and France for the 2024 Olympics – automatically qualify for those tournaments. All other nations must go through a series of other tournaments, such as AmeriCup, to reach these fields.